YUSHU EARTHQUAKE 2010

Liya Shaiz, Maria Paul

 ● Moment of Magnitude of 7.1

● Epicenter was located in Rima

Village, Upper laxiu township of
Yushu County, in remote and
Overview of the rugged terrain, near the border
of Tibet autonomous Region.
Yushu Earthquake ● Date - April 14 2010

● Areas affected : Qinghai,

Sichuan, People’s Republic of
China
 Geological and Seismological Data of Yushu
Earthquake
1. Qinghai lies in the northeastern part
of the Tibetan Plateau, which formed
due to ongoing collision of the Indian
Plate with the Eurasian Plate.

2. The main deformation in this area is

crustal shortening, but there is also a
component of left lateral strike slip
faulting on major west-east trending
structures such as Kunlun and Altyn
Tagh fault systems that accommodate
southeastward translation of the
tibetan area.
3. The earthquake occurred on the Yushu fault, about 300km south of the Kunlun fault.

4.The yushu fault forms part of the Yushu garze Xianshihe fault zone, one of the most active
fault zones in eastern tibet.

5. The earthquake was preceded by a large number of foreshocks starting 2 hours before the
mainshock and located near its epicenter.

6.A total rupture length of about 80km has been derived from a study of ground rupture.

7. Analysis of the records from a seismometer located close to the fault rupture and the
teleseismic responses from two distant seismometers suggest that the rupture propagated to
the southeast at a speed well in excess of the S- wave velocity, making this an example of a
supershear earthquake.
Building Configuration
Performance of 5 types of structures in Jiegu town
● 3 Performance of five types of structures in Jiegu
Town
● Jiegu Town is located at the area of intersection of
the Zhaqu and Baqu Rivers. Along the
● narrow valleys of these two rivers, Jiegu Town
exhibits a T-shaped urban plan, as shown in
● Fig. 4a. Because of the high population and the
considerable number of non-engineered
● buildings, the damage in this town was more severe
than that in other locations. The
● damage to the southwestern and southern parts of
this town was more severe than in the
● eastern and central parts, as can be seen in Fig. 4;
this is due to the proximity of surface
● ruptures marked by red dashed dotted lines in Fig.
4a.
●
● The Chinese Seismic Design Code (GB50011-2010) was
revised after the 2008
● Wenchuan earthquake, but most of the engineered structures
were constructed before 2010
● and thus only in conformance with the older version codes (e.g.,
GBJ 11-1989, GB50011-
● 2001). According to the GB 50011-2001 code, the seismic
fortification intensity of Jiegu
● Town was VII; the actual seismic intensity of Jiegu Town,
however, reached IX in the 1. ADOBE AND STONE
● earthquake. In addition, Jiegu Town is an undeveloped area, STRUCTURE
and most of its buildings are 2. CONCRETE BLOCK
● non-engineered and therefore have high vulnerability.
● In Jiegu Town, the survey team mainly investigated five types of STRUCTURES
structures: adobe (or 3. RC FRAME STRUCTURES
● stone) houses, concrete block structures, reinforced concrete 4. BRICK MASONRY STRUCTURES
(RC) frame structures, brick 5. BOTTOM FRAME STRUCTURES
● masonry structures, and bottom RC frame structures. A total of
5,394 of about 15,000 buildings in Jiegu Town were sampled
and investigated. Table 2shows the damage distribution
(number of buildings in each damage grade) for each structural
type.
●
●
Summary of Structural Damage
All percentages of structural damage described in the preceding section are shown in
Fig. 22a. The seismic damage and capacity indices for each structure type were calculated
using a method originally proposed by the authors in earlier studies (Lin et al. 2010,2011)
and are shown in Fig. 22b. Adobe and stone structures had the most severe damage as
reflected by their highest percentage of complete damage (60.49 %) and their lowest
seismic capacity index (0.19). More than 64 % of the death toll was caused by the collapse
of adobe and stone buildings. In the future, such structures should not be built in high-
seismic-risk zones due to risks caused by low-strength materials, weak clay–straw covered
by tiles, and loose connections among walls, beams, and purlins. Brick masonry and
concrete block structures have similar damage intensities with approximate damage indices
of 0.59 and 0.60, respectively. These two structural types should exhibit less damage if
designed and constructed strictly following the design codes, including providing a suf-
ficient number of belt courses and structural columns as well as by using stronger mortar.
Unfortunately, because most buildings representing these two structural types in Jiegu
Town did not satisfy these requirements, they had severe damage resulting in many
casualties. More than 30 % of the death toll was caused by the collapse of concrete block
buildings, while about 2 % were caused by the collapse of brick masonry buildings. The
bottom frame structure had the second lowest percentage of no damage (4.29 %). The
damage to bottom frame buildings was caused mainly by stiffness discontinuities in the
vertical direction. It is thus suggested that this kind of structure should no longer be constructed in
high-seismic-risk zones or should at least include specific measures to
ensure an appropriate distribution of vertical stiffness.